Flavouring
Flavoured Tea
Flavoured
teas have been around for a long time already. The oldest known recipes
or varieties are from China, where green and black teas were being
mixed or enhanced with jasmine or rose blossoms or even smoked a long
time ago.
Nowadays there are no boundaries as to what
you could imagine in this respect. Especially the last 20 years hve
experienced a huge increase in the varieties available and hardly any
desires are left unmet.
The modern "World of Tea" of
today cannot do without the use of machines anymore, even though some
blends of lower quantities are still produced manually. Modern blend
and packaging machines simplify and improve the production process and
guarantee a high as well as continuous quality level.
Flavoured Rooibos
Rooibos can be
flavoured very well because it has a naturally sweet character and,
hence harmonises well with flavours of sweet fruits such as peach,
strawberry and melon. The tea soaks up the flavour with its fine leaf
structure. In order to insure a sufficient intake of the flavour, the
aroma is used in higher doses than for other teas. However, this higher
dosage can present the problem that the tea is forming. Hence, it has
to be mixed very thoroughly. Like with other tea bases, Rooibos can
also be decorated by adding fruit pieces or leaves in order to adjust
the decor to the taste.
Flavours
The term „aroma“ comes from the Greek language and means: spice.
Aromas
are the determinants of the taste of foodstuff. They give food a
clearly distinguishable character and generally only the combination of
several 100 flavours forms the typical taste and smell of a certain
food. The entire concentration of aromas is in the ppb-area (parts per
billion).
According to § 1 of the aroma
regulation, aromas are concentrated preparations of flavours and
further components of foodstuff which are technologically necessary.
We can distinguish between the following varieties of aromas:
- natural aromas
- nature-identical aromas
- artificial aromas
- aroma extracts
Natural Aromas
Natural
aromas are yielded from natural, plant or animal raw materials, such as
fruits, spices, herbs, roasted coffee or smoked ham. In their
production, only physical, enzymatic or microbiological procedures can
be used such as squeezing, destilling, warming, filtering, grinding,
blending, fermenting or cutting.
Nature-identical Aromas
Nature-identical
aromas are produced via chemical synthesis such as esterification or
acetylation. The hereby used raw materials do not have to be of natural
origin, but the chemical characteristic of the final product has to be
identical to a naturally existing substance of plant or animal origin.
Therefore, a large number of nature-identical aromas is available,
which are equal in quality to the natural ones.
Nature-identical aromas are generally residue-free.
Artificial Aromas
Artificial aromas have the
same characteristics as natural aromas, but they do not exist in
nature. In Germany, their use in teas is forbidden by law.
Aroma Extracts
Aroma extracts are, like natural aromas, produced from natural, plant
or animal raw materials via physical, enzymatic or microbiological
procedures. However, aroma extracts are highly concentrated aroma
blends which are much more intensive than the naturally existing raw
materials.